Chapter 12
Twelve
G race and Trevor were silent for a bit as they walked along side by side.
Grace remembered how perfect Trevor had always felt beside her.
It wasn’t that they were the same size, since he was a good bit bigger than she was, but it just felt good to have him beside her.
Good and right in the kind of way that made peace settle down into her soul and made the world feel happy and bright.
“We spent a good bit of time out here at the farm growing up,” Trevor finally said.
“We did. So many happy memories.” And everything was ruined by one really, really bad one. Maybe not ruined, since it didn’t exactly happen on the farm, but it was a memory that shadows clung to with grippy fingers that sent shivers, and not the good kind, down her spine.
“Too bad about the tragedy.”
“Yeah. That’s what I was just thinking.”
They didn’t need to say anything. They both knew what it was.
Although Trevor hadn’t been there, he’d still been affected, because everyone in their small town had been affected.
And Yolanda had been part of the group. Until she was gone.
And wasn’t anymore. She had more than once come out here to hang out and to have fun on the farm.
Where the wide-open spaces beckoned, and there were never- ending things to do and explore.
Not like there wasn’t a huge lake down below to explore and have fun too.
And there were several vantage points on the farm where the views of the lake were just absolutely outstanding.
“It’s too bad about that. I think that’s why Claire never came back. And this is such a beautiful place.”
“Yeah. It’s funny how we allow the things in the past to control us.
” Even as she said that, it made her angry, just a little.
After all, she didn’t want some random incident from years ago to define who she was today.
Although, somehow it did. Not just the tragedy from her youth, but her husband’s betrayal, her divorce, the loss of her job, all of those things had beaten her down and made her feel less than.
“Whatever happens to us, our worth is supposed to be because we’re a child of God. The creator of the universe, the living God, the master of everything, loves us and considers us His children when we trust in Christ. We’re brothers with Jesus.”
“And sisters,” she said easily, but she knew what he meant. That should trump everything. It should make everything look small in comparison. And it should keep them from allowing themselves to be beaten down by life. But somehow… Somehow she allowed it to happen anyway.
“It’s funny how easily we forget. How easily we’re swayed by whatever is right in front of us.”
“Or whatever looms large in our minds. Why can’t God be just as large as tragedy and sadness and regret?”
“And as big as betrayal and mistakes and all the negative things. We make those negative things so much bigger than any positives we could possibly find.”
“Not only the positive of God loving us, of being a child of God, finding my worth in Christ, but there’s also the positive of how our trials and the things that we’ve gone through make us better people.”
They stopped at the gate to the yard and faced each other automatically, and saw each other trying to grapple with the question and come up with a satisfactory answer.
“I think that’s the point of life,” Grace finally said.
“What?” Trevor asked, as though he had lost the thread of their conversation. Maybe he had. His thoughts surely weren’t going in the same direction that hers were.
“I know that after we’re saved, God leaves us here and doesn’t take us to heaven right away, because He wants us to tell other people about Him.”
“I agree. But I don’t see how that fits with what we were talking about.”
“I just didn’t want you to think I was developing a new reason for us to be here, contrary to what the Bible says.”
“Okay.”
“But I do believe that as we’re left here, we go through these trials, these hard things, and the point of our life is to bring glory to God through them. And that makes us better people, because you can’t go through trials without being changed. Sometimes it’s for the worse.”
“Like when we focus on the bad.”
“Exactly. We fail to see God’s hand when we insist on looking at how dark and dim things are rather than seeing how God is trying to work in us and change us to be more like Him.”
“It’s a really hard thing to think about sometimes. Especially when you’re grieving, or your heart is broken, or you feel so terrible you just don’t have words.”
“And like you can’t go on.” She knew that only too well. She certainly had days—and, if she were being honest, weeks—like that after she found out her husband was cheating on her. She didn’t want to go into all of that right now with Trevor.
“But you’re saying that focusing on the good makes you better.”
“I think so. And I also think sacrifice, when God says to us, do you love me more than this? And whatever it is that He’s allowed to be taken from you or whatever hard thing He’s asked you to go through or do, you have to be willing to pry your hands up away from what you want and let it go.
” She had had to learn that about her husband and her marriage and all the dreams that she had for her life.
“You’re talking like you have experience.”
She looked at the ground, at the sand and stone that were as much a part of her childhood as the wind and the water and the lake itself.
“When I got married, I thought I would be married forever.” She hadn’t been going to talk to Trevor about it, but it seemed like he was interested.
And it showed an example of what she was talking about.
“I think we all think that when we get married, don’t we?”
“Maybe. I suppose in modern day, there are a lot of people who are thinking, we’ll try this and see if it works.
But anyway, I thought I would have a fiftieth wedding anniversary.
I thought I would have a family, children, grandchildren, you know?
” She had been driven to be successful, yes, but she had expected to have all of that as well.
“And?” he prompted her.
“And my husband cheated. He left me. It was pretty bad.” That didn’t seem like it explained nearly how bad it was.
Not even close. “And I was devastated. All of these things that I wanted, that I expected to have, had now been ripped away from me. I wondered why God was doing this to me. Why was He putting me through this trial? Why allow this pain? Why me? Why not someone else?”
“I think those are questions everybody has asked at some point or another. But the question probably should be, why not me?”
“Exactly. But beyond that, I got to thinking, maybe God was saying that I made my marriage my idol. I made the dreams that I had for my life—my family, my kids—idols as well.”
“You expect God to give you all good things and no bad.” He paused for a moment. “And you can’t be saying that it was God’s will for your husband to commit adultery?”
“I struggled with that. Why did God do that? It couldn’t possibly be His will, right?”
“God’s will couldn’t include sin, right?”
She shrugged. She really didn’t know. After all, David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. It was in the Bible. God didn’t approve, but He allowed it to happen. He showed the consequences, and then He used it to bring a blessing to all of Israel, a new king, the wisest man who ever lived.
“I guess I would say that maybe it’s not God’s will, but He allows it, because He knows that these trials will make me a stronger, better person.
But He also wants to know, kind of like Abraham and Isaac, whether I will turn to Him and cling to Him no matter what happens in my life.
Is He really the most important thing in my life?
Am I really trusting Him? Even when it seems like He’s doing me hurt rather than good?
That’s probably the hardest time in my life that I had to trust God.
It just didn’t seem like I could turn to Him and depend on Him, because He let me down so much. ”
“He has never let you down.”
While a part of her wanted to argue that Trevor didn’t know all the details of her life, his statement was made with complete confidence because he knew the character of God.
That made the difference, and that allowed his faith—to know, and believe, to have faith, that God was good and loving and kind and long-suffering all the time. Always.
So, rather than argue, like her old self might have, she had to agree. “That’s right. And I think that’s what we learn through those kinds of things.”
She fingered the top of the fence, picking off a chip of paint.
“God, no matter what happens, is always there and never lets us down, no matter how bad it looks. It hurts, it hurts a lot, sometimes we have to go through the pain in order to come out on the other side to the blessings that way. To become the person that He wants us to become. To become more like Jesus.”
“And I think learning that made whatever suffering you had worthwhile, even though it probably didn’t seem that way at the time.”
“Yes. Exactly. I probably would have punched someone in the nose if they tried to tell me that the things I learned from my suffering were going to be worthwhile.” She wasn’t typically prone to violence, but she could see herself having a violent reaction.
“And why? When someone’s just trying to point out something that’s helpful, why do we have such a violent, physical, anger-induced reaction?”
“That’s a good question, isn’t it? Maybe it’s jealousy because those people aren’t going through the suffering that I am. Or maybe it’s the idea that they’re trying to tell me that this pain is going to bring something good, something that is hard for me to see. I don’t know.”